


Little Comforts

by prettybrilliantfunny



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettybrilliantfunny/pseuds/prettybrilliantfunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost an hour after he’d gotten up, Raleigh crept back into the bedroom and pulled the curtains open, filling the room with bright winter sunlight, and from the bed came an outraged: “The fuck time ‘s it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Comforts

 

 

Almost an hour after he’d gotten up, Raleigh crept back into the bedroom and pulled the curtains open, filling the room with bright winter sunlight, and from the bed came an outraged: “The fuck time ‘s it?”

Raleigh couldn’t see Chuck’s face, but he could imagine how his it looked.

Now after years of hard bunks and olive-green everything, Chuck had taken to little comforts of civilian life like a dingo took to…whatever dingoes took to.  It manifested itself in strange ways that were often hard to anticipate or follow.  

He would eat off-brand cardboard cereal every morning without complaint, but had commandeered over a third of their counter space for a massive, chrome-plated espresso machine that Raleigh was absolutely forbidden to touch. 

When the PPDC stopped manufacturing stock shirts, Chuck bought a 10-pack of nearly identical crewnecks from the department store.  He could care less about what he wore, so long as it held up.

Their bed, however, was a mountain of thread counts and brilliant whiteness—the crowning pinnacle of which was an oversized comforter incapable of being squashed, folded, or otherwise overcome and which had to be burrowed through like an cloud of marshmallow fluff.

Raleigh wasn’t entirely convinced Chuck didn’t love it more than him.

Now he shrugged, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed just to be annoying.  “Dunno.  Clock’s still out on the oven.”

Beneath the mound of blankets Raleigh himself had untangled from, Chuck turned onto his side, automatically curving his body to accommodate Raleigh’s presence.

“It’s not out, ya drongo,” the Aussie argued, voice still rough.  “You just gotta add 5 hours ‘n 11 minutes. No…” His sleepy face furrowed a little.  “Other way ‘round.”

He pressed his head deeper into his pillow, mumbling: “I think.”

“Yeeeah. That makes no sense,” Raleigh laughed, incorrigibly cheery even at—what Chuck _assumed_ —was an ungodly hour.

“Shut it.”

Raleigh was running his hand absently down his side, but Chuck was slightly more awake now and his eyes narrowed.  “Did you try and make coffee again…?"

Raleigh froze. “What? No!”

“It smells like maple syrup.”  At Raleigh’s adorably confused face, he added: “When you burn the coffee it smells like maple syrup.”

“No it doesn’t.”

Turning a little to face him, Chuck gave him a pointed look with the only eye that was visible.  Everything else, but a shock of ginger hair, buried in pillows and sheets.

Raleigh’s mouth quirked.  “Are you getting up?”

“Nope,” Chuck declared with a pop of lips. “Stay,” he commanded with a mischievous glint.  One Raleigh was all too familiar with.

He tried to grab hold of Raleigh as the other man sighed and started to stand, but Chuck’s hands were hindered by the fucking comforter he had insisted on buying and were little better than oven mitts pawing at Raleigh’s waist. Chuck grunted in annoyance, snagging the waistband of his boyfriend’s pajama bottoms only to lose him as Raleigh laughed and pulled easily away.

“Coward,” he called after Raleigh’s retreating back; not at all sullen about it.

“Get your lazy ass out of bed,” the hall replied.

 

 

Eventually, Chuck _did_ get his lazy (“Perfect, you said perfect, Becket—in Shanghai, remember?”) ass out of bed.

Shuffling into the kitchen in sweatpants and a rumpled olive shirt, Chuck was surprised, if not completely taken aback, to see Raleigh at the counter flipping pancakes.  He stopped in the doorway, one hand on the cream archway.  The blonde’s bare feet were tucked under the cuffs of his low-slung pajamas, but it apparently wasn’t cold enough to warrant a shirt as he yawned mid-flip and scratched at his bare chest, not yet aware of Chuck’s presence.

“You made breakfast.”

Raleigh looked over his shoulder, a smile forming automatically at the sight of Chuck. “I made breakfast,” he echoed—ever agreeable.

He’d confined most of his mess to the sink, save for the flour fingerprints across the thighs of his pajamas.  There was a mug of damp blueberries at his elbow – they’d run out of clean bowls two days ago – and more of them seemed to end up in his mouth than in the pancakes.

Raleigh spooned out another six circles and they sizzled softly.  He scattered a few blueberries into each, then palmed the rest into his open mouth.

Chuck was still trying to process Raleigh “I-Eat-Candybars-For-Breakfast” Becket leaning over a hot griddle like some kind of…person who knew how to use a griddle.

“You’re making pancakes…That’s—“ He caught sight of Raleigh’s pleased grin—cheeks full of blueberries and all, spatula dripping batter onto the counter, and cleared his throat.

“Lame,” he finished.

Raleigh just shook his head, half-smiling, as if he’d expected nothing less.  “Eat,” he said, pointing with the drippy spatula to an already piled plate.  There was a mug of steaming coffee next to it—which Chuck ignored, hoisting himself onto the countertop.  He hooked the plate closer, pulling a still-hot cake out of the middle of the stack.  He knew Raleigh was watching him out of the corner of his eye as he rolled the pancake up like burrito and took a bite.

The coffee was sure to be terrible; Becket was fucking useless at it, despite being American.  But the pancakes—the pancakes were pretty damn ripper.

“Not bad, right?” Raleigh asked, flipping the last of them off the griddle. “Used to make them for Jaz when she’d had a bad day.”

Chuck eyed him curiously across the kitchen, mouth working around the last bite.  “I haven’t had a bad day,” he pointed out.

Raleigh smirked, highlighting the smudge of flour across his cheek.  “No,” he agreed.

He tossed the spatula into the sink and turned towards Chuck, licking a bit of stray batter from his thumb.  It made Chuck acutely aware of how annoyingly fit Raleigh looked all the time, and Chuck, just out of bed, still felt heavy and tousled from sleep.  He scrubbed his hand through his hair, certain it was sticking up like mad.

For his part, Raleigh didn’t seem to mind.  Their kitchen was small; he crossed it in two strides, passing through the swath of sunlight from the far window and into the shadow of Chuck’s corner.

“No,” Raleigh said again, easing Chuck’s knees apart and taking up residence between them. He left his hands there—two warm points of contact through his trousers.  “You’re gonna have a real good day.”

Chuck looked down at him, hips pressed flush against the cabinets and tall enough that even with Chuck sitting on the counter his mouth was still close enough to kiss.  If Chuck wanted to. 

He licked his lips. “That so?” he asked—half challenging.

“Yeah,” Raleigh murmured easily. “It’s so.”

His eyes darted to Chuck’s mouth, then back up and if Chuck wasn’t already on the edge of it, the look in Raleigh’s grey eyes alone would have done it.  His skin felt tight, and Raleigh looked like the last glass of water in the waste of the outback.  Again, his eyes slid to Chuck’s mouth, the anxious swallow of his throat—and fuck if the old man wasn’t the slowest boyfriend in the whole fucking hemisphere.

“Oh _get on with it,_ ” Chuck huffed in impatience.

Raleigh grinned.  “Yeah,” he breathed again and then his hands were slotted against his hips and his mouth was hot and familiar against his own. 

He kissed like Gipsy fought: like he fucking meant it.  And he fucking meant it—all mouth and tongue, jaw working as he bruised his kiss like a welded brand across Chuck’s lips.  Chuck wasn’t the only one bruising. He hooked his leg around Raleigh’s waist, heel digging into the softness of his lower back and pressed and pressed their bodies together like a vise spinning shut.

“Fuck _me_ ,” Chuck swore, and Raleigh huffed for laughing.

“You’re skipping a few important steps,” he said, licking a stripe across Chuck’s chest. 

That earned him a moan, followed by: “ _You’re an asshole_.”

“Brat,” Raleigh countered.  But it was fond, warm around the edges like an endearment, and Chuck burned with wanton shame when the sound of it went straight south. He swallowed hard.

“You’re the idiot who made me pancakes,” he pointed out, sliding his thumbs across the juts of Raleigh’s collarbones.

“Made _us_ pancakes,” Raleigh corrected, nuzzling at a spot just below Chuck’s jaw.  And Chuck rolled his eyes with a tsking sort of sound, but he must have smiled despite his best efforts because Raleigh kissed the corner of his mouth—the way he did when his dimples were showing.  Softly, softly.  One on each side.

“God you’re chatty,” Chuck muttered, shifting just enough to catch Raleigh’s mouth.  This kiss was slower.  Languid.  Like they had all the time in the world.  And today maybe they did.

Raleigh pulled back, smiling faintly when Chuck let him go with a quick nip.  They were close enough that Chuck could see the striations of blue in the grey of Raleigh’s eyes, the beginning blond scruff of his unshaved jaw.  He could see the thing he wasn’t dumb enough to name in the familiar planes of Raleigh’s face.

“What’re you gonna do about it?” Raleigh teased, his hands beneath Chuck’s shirt, running up and down his sides. 

And Chuck smiled.  

_Oh, what he would do._

 


End file.
